Tony Stark and the Gift
by Minadalrive
Summary: For a third year in a row, Tony has "forgotten" Pepper's birthday. Can he possibly make up for it?
1. The Need

**Tony Stark and the Gift**

**Part I: The Need**

Tony Stark's days were set like the endless crowd of robots and mechanical pieces sharing his laboratory: constant and unpredictable, like only time could be.

Which meant he spent most of every twenty-four hours locked up in the company of metal, palladium and extravagant engineered wonders, i.e. when he wasn't testing his newest invention with the enthusiasm and judgement of a cocaine drug addict. He couldn't quite recall the number of times Pepper had to stitch back his head, shook him back to consciousness—'mostly by slappingyou', his still red and sore cheeks reminded him—or knelt by him while he was throwing up.

Pepper. The reason behind the folly. The iron hand of management under the velvet glove of dashing superficiality.

That sounded almost as dirty as his greased hands plunged into the abyss of electronic elements he was currently assembling. Or would that be a motor? Tony checked back in the real world and adjusted a light bud that was flashing like crazy. Where was Dummy when he was needed?

Oh, yeah. He had dismantled the boy and reassembled him as a gardener assistant for Pepper the last time the robot had dared misunderstand he was _not _on fire.

Hell, he hadn't been. Just a couple of blue flames.

Funny how his thoughts kept circling back to Pepper. Perhaps 'pathetic" would be the word to use, though…

– Anthony Stark!

Oho. Every time she called him by his full name, he knew to hide in the metal field of his laboratory, and today was _so _not going to be an exception. He quickly dove into a pool of twisted copper cables.

– Anthony Edward Stark! Show your sorry ass right now!

Was he sorry? Should he be sorry? He rapidly brought to memory the events of the last seventy-two hours, but apart from a new hole in the wall and minor concussions on his _own_ head, thank you very much, he hadn't caused any major catastrophe that would explain his assistant's current mood.

He watched through a red serpentine wall the feminine silhouette approaching in the dimmed light of his laboratory. At least, Jarvis had had sense enough to adjust the luminosity to the threatening situation.

"Why is Pepper mad?" he asked the A.I. in a rough whisper.

"I believe you know the reason already," retorted Jarvis in a low voice.

Smart ass. And he had thought it would be a revolutionary idea to build up a sarcastic A.I.!

"You better start talking before I dismantle you," he groaned a bit too loud.

A hand loomed over his pool of cowardice and grabbed him by his black-tainted, grease-stained collar. For a woman of such a oh so delicate and delicious stature, Virginia Potts certainly knew how to pull a man out of his best hiding place.

"Hey, Pepper," he laughed with a twinge of uncertainty. "Did I ever tell you blue makes you look even more beautiful than usual? Breath-catching, I mean, the previous compliment was of course downright rude—"

Pepper's glare was increasingly intimidating.

"You have an appointment. _Six hours _ago."

"Would that be with the engineering comity?"

He gasped as she let him fall down among the copper cables.

"Not exactly." Her icy voice sent shivers down his spine. "For the third year in a row, you merely promised you would have dinner with me. For my birthday."

Tony looked up at her. She certainly looked positively splendiferous. He _had_ remembered his promise, right until the last minute, just like he had for the past two years. He appreciated Pepper—he really did. To organize a dinner with her, to shower her with attention and presents, both money acquired and emotionally offered, would be the perfect way to thank her for everything she had done for him since he had made the life-saving decision to hire a secretary. She deserved this.

But she didn't deserve him. She deserved better than that, he thought with a sourness he had yet to master. She deserved a man that wasn't eyes and brains deep into his inventions, a man that had time for her outside excessive parties and flights all over the world to save the widow and the orphan.

It didn't help that she was infatuated with him—he would be a fool not to have noticed it—and it certainly didn't, but really _didn't_ help that she intimidated him in a way that made it impossible for him to tell her to go look somewhere else for her own sake.

Her beauty, body and mind, also offered a challenge he couldn't face with his usual arsenal. His own infatuation was growing every day.

Pepper was still looking at him with daggers in her eyes.

"Look Pepper I'm sorry I sort of forgot again I didn't want to hurt your feelings hell I know you have much more than I do and if I was a better man I would have—"

"Oh, just shut up, Tony."

Pepper's lips somehow ended right on his, soft, luscious and sweet. He tasted honey and flowers, and under it, the raw zest of longing. He gasped as two warm hands grabbed hold of his oil-tainted shoulders. Perfectly manicured and sharp nails plunged in his flesh, drawing a moan out of his throat. He seized Pepper's narrow hips and sat her on some still shapeless metallic cube, savouring every bit of sensuous data this amazing woman was gifting him with.

It was her birthday, not his, he reminded him. Quite unwillingly, he pushed her away, smiling at her protesting moans.

"Pepper…"

She refused to look at him, eyes casted down on the intertwined copper cables. Her cheeks showed an interesting red, but for the life of him, Tony couldn't say if it was from shyness or excitation. He hoped for the second one. And then again, not.

"Look, Pepper, I didn't forget your birthday, I… I just…"

He wanted to bang his head on the nearest wall. Really! Anthony Stark, head of SI, incapacitated by a woman.

But what a woman that was…

"I don't know what I should give you," he finally said in a rush, his own cheek traitorously glowing. "I… I just want you to be happy."

"Really?"

Pepper's expression of surprise hurt him a little.

"Of course I want you to! It might not look like it, but… Don't sneer at me!"

Her mocking smile made him nervous. He buried his hands in his pockets in a protective gesture of his ego.

"You know what you could do to make me happy? It is something really simple, that doesn't even require you to leave your dear lab."

Tony bit his lip.

"Pepper, I'm not sure it's a good idea…"

She rose up with a furious expression.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say!"

He just smiled, raising his fingers to his mouth. He could still feel her lips, incredibly delicious…

For once, she was the one to blush.

"I didn't… It…"

"Just tell me what you wish, and you shall have it."

Pepper blushed even harder. Tony began to think it was a very bad idea to let that happen—a really _good _idea, intervened his second brain with a rush of blood—, but then Pepper surprised him.

**AN**: Any ideas?


	2. Safe

**AN**: First thing first, I don't own any of these interesting characters (merely my version of their interaction). Have fun (and girls –and boys, should one so far happily ventures– never let yourself get tied up by a stranger, even Tony Stark That was my BDSM responsible moment of the day)!

**xxx-benedictbrothersfan-xxx**: Happy to oblige!

**titemeli13**: Hope you like, it was time consuming (:P)

**Cynder56**: Sorry, but I already *sort of* hinted at the cables!

**Starkind**: I'm happy you appreciate the IC (as opposed to OOC) I took time to consider. Let's just hope you find the gift Tony-esque enough :P

**Part II: Safe**

Tony just stared at the copper cables, unable to form a single word. He felt his insides warming up, desire swelling from the tip of his toes to every single end of his thoroughly messed hair. Lust was surging forward in his veins, white-hot burning, ridiculously powerful and intoxicating. Urging him to move.

To kiss.

To devour.

He staggered on his tickling feet, using his unbalance as an excuse to get in the perfumed vicinity of the woman he had wanted for eons.

Ok, for ages. But it felt like he could finally grasp how magnificent was the exchange of air between the external world and his lungs and head. But right now the fountainhead of engineering prowess was unable to compute mere additions—of five numbers cubic roots.

Pepper. That was certainly an addition he…

_Oh my God._

"You want me to… tie you up?" The fact that he could utter it at all was nothing short of a miracle. His body was coursing with electrical anticipation, and it took him all his might not to do exactly what his dainty assistant had requested, and then to kiss her all over, lose himself in the smell of her skin and the song of her pleas, to access her most intimate…

But it was _her _birthday wish, he reminded himself with a mental smack on the head. Plus, he didn't have the slightest clue about bondage. Sure, he had bound the wrists of a couple of girls on his bed post in the past, but what Pepper asked sounded… different. More… exciting.

_And it was Pepper._

His assistant pursed her lips, gaze carefully averted, hands clasped down on her thighs. "That's the… hum… gist of it."

The ardent hunger in Tony's eyes, the way it made his genius' orbs sparkle with something so primal it could not be told but felt, made something in Pepper's belly tighten. Her hands began to shake. She bit her lips to keep from moaning. The way he looked at her, through her…

She could already imagine herself in headspace.

"To-Tony," she stuttered.

"Yes?"

One calloused hand closed on her shoulder, sending waves of thirst down her throat. She couldn't meet his eyes.

"Do you… know, what… I… It's to say, that…"

"Pepper."

The hand left a burning trail along her jaw. This time, when she met his eyes, she let out a strangled moan. Tony's whole body shifted, pulsing with the need to please.

"Tell me how you wish me to bind you."

Surprisingly enough, he had managed to say that without juggling with vocabulary and syntax. His new-found confidence, he knew, took root in Pepper's unusual submissive attitude towards him. He enjoyed a bossy assistant who could kick his ass to next Sunday, but right now, in _his _lab, for this particular need of hers, he thoroughly relished a sudden gain in control. He knew only too well that most of the time, said control was evading him. And he knew exactly what it meant in this situation.

It sort of helped that he knew how to do a dozen knots as well. He bowed slightly, never cessing to touch Pepper's warm cheek, and grabbed a three-meter long copper cable.

"Tell me, Pepper."

Her assistant swallowed, and Tony, fascinated, looked at the shyness travelling down her sweet throat.

"I want you to make me feel… safe," she squeaked, reaching a new level of red. "Can you… Can you do that?"

Tony wanted to drop on his knees and obey, copper cables included. He did exactly that.

"Give me your wrists, milady."

In a blink, Tony had the delicate alabaster wrists of her assistant safely bound to each other. He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed each finger, brushing them with his goatee. Pepper writhed slightly, her eyelids already half closed, heavy and refined like hummingbird feathers.

"To-Tony…"

"Shh…" He laid a kiss on her bound wrists, smiling broadly. "I will make you feel safe."

The laboratory temperature rapidly increased. Tony had Pepper sit on his working table, and even though she protested at his method of cleaning the surface—slinging everything on the floor, blue-prints and expensive tools, with disregard—, she quickly found herself possessed by silence as Tony began to draw copper motives on her body. She still had all her clothes on, which amounted to matching black underwear and a working knee-length skirt and blouse, but she couldn't help but feel naked under the pressure of those hands and eyes working on her. Working her up. She was sweetly sweating, deliciously aware of every single nerve ending in her body. A shiver escaped her as Tony licked up a beam of sweat on her collarbone. She arched on the table, legs spread wide out to her arms, and let her head fall back, fully exposing her throat. Tony's groan made her gasp. Her heart was beating like his fastest car on full speed, her rational mind in slivers.

"Oh, Pepper…"

"I didn't know you could… tie women up so well," she let out in a hesitant whisper.

Tony raised her chin, locking gaze with her.

"Only you shall I revere with such design," he crooned as he slid another length of cable between her breasts. "Only you, Pepper."

She felt dizzy with rapture. Every new knot had her feeling better, every touch of Tony's hands safer. Over the last three years, she had felt so much anxiety, so much doubts and regrets every time Tony went on a mission with the Suit, that she couldn't postpone this comfort session any longer.

And then Tony looked happy to oblige. His goatee brushed along one naked tight, heading north.

"Tell me if I should stop-"

"Please!" she cried out.

Her plea really wasn't open to interpretation. Tony ran his thumbs in circles on her velvet skin, making his way to the damp folds of expectation. The first breath he drew in made him lightheaded, the second addicted. He quickly tore down the black panties and lapped at the oversensitive skin, lavishing his assistant with the attention she had deserved for year now.

"Tony! Oh…"

When she came for a third time this night, still tied up, incredibly sublime with her eyes shining from tears of joy, Tony considered the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could cherish Pepper Potts this way every year.

And more frequently, if she so desired.

**NA: **Hope you liked it! Kisses to all of you :)


End file.
